Gates and Zuckerberg urge kids to code

Titled “What most schools don't teach,” the video released online Tuesday begins with Zuckerberg, Gates and other tech icons recalling the time they got their start in coding. For some, that was in sixth grade. For others, such as Ruchi Sanghvi, Facebook's first female engineer, that happened in college. Freshman year, first semester, intro to computer science, to be exact.

Running less than six minutes, the video promotes Code.org, a nonprofit foundation created last year to help grow computer programming education.

“The first time I actually had something come up and say 'Hello world,' and I made a computer do that, that was just astonishing,” recalls Gabe Newell, president of video game studio Valve.

But it's not just tech leaders promoting programming in the video. Chris Bosh, of the Miami Heat basketball team, says about coding: “I know it can be intimidating, a lot of things are intimidating, but, you know, what isn't?”

Code.org was founded by tech entrepreneur Hadi Partovi, an early investor in Facebook, Dropbox and the vacation rental site Airbnb. The nonprofit wants to address an oft-cited problem among tech companies — not enough computer science graduates to fill a growing number of programming jobs. The group laments that many schools don't even offer classes in programming.

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